How to Travel to the Removed Portal Locations in Patch 8.1.5

With the removal of several portals in Patch 8.1.5, you may be wondering how to get back to these old-world locations if you are interested in farming old content for mounts, pets, and more. We've updated our transportation guide for 8.1.5 with all the portal changes, and in this article, we're highlighting how to reach areas by removed portals and why they're still worth visiting!

To recap, with the addition of the Portal Rooms in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, some portals in old cities to interesting locations have been removed:

Caverns of Time, Kalimdor

Dalaran Crater, Eastern Kingdoms

Hellfire Peninsula, Outland

Karazhan, Eastern Kingdoms

Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Pandaria

Wyrmrest Temple, Dragonblight

You can read Blizzard's reasoning for removing the portals here, and our transportation guide for details on all teleportation items in the game, flight paths, portals, Hearthstones, and more.

Caverns of Time, Kalimdor

Why was this portal useful? This portal in Kalimdor was located next to many notable dungeons and raids in the southern part of the continent. While there are some nearby portals, a little bit of travel time is now added in 8.1.5. The Caverns of Time portal is close to:

Paladins can get to Lights Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands by going to their Class Hall, the Sanctum of Light, from Legion Dalaran. The portals are located in Greyfang Enclave (A) and Windrunner's Sanctuary (H).

Hellfire Peninsula, Outland

Why was this portal useful? This portal wasn't that useful compared to others, as there isn't much to farm in Hellfire, but you can still reach Shattrath and Blasted Lands easily. Hellfire is close to:

There are new Mage NPCs in place of portals to the Blasted Lands. In Stormwind, talk to Honor Hold Mage at the entrance to the Mage Tower. In Orgrimmar, talk to Thrallmar Mage by the Shattrath portal in the Portal room. These NPCs will take you to the Blasted Lands, right by the Dark Portal.

The Blasted Lands is a short flight from Stormwind, for Alliance players.

If you are on AU Draenor, various locations will port you to Outland via the Ever-Shifting Mirror for 500 Timewarped Badges.

As Hellfire is in a strange location, you may prefer traveling to other locations in Outland for old content:

Karazhan, Eastern Kingdoms

Why was this portal useful? The Karazhan portal was right next to a popular dungeon. Losing this portal is a bigger deal for Horde than Alliance, as the Alliance can easily fly from Stormwind. The Karazhan portal is close to:

Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Pandaria

Why was this portal useful? The Vale portal took players to a Pandaria zone filled with things to do. Losing this portal is inconvenient, as there aren't that many portals in central Pandaria. The Vale portal is close to:

Comments

Comment by FleckerMan

I have to say this is by far top 5 one of the worst design changes implemented in World of Warcraft. I am fully convinced that Activision bean counters are in full control.

Mm, those portals cost loads of $ to keep running.

Comment by nef7zamora

on 2019-03-10T03:06:11-05:00

I borrowed this list from the person below. I have many of these items and use them all of the time. The list is a little old but most all of these still work as indicated. Thank you Leishai for this amazing and comprehensive list.

By Leishai (66,099 – 29·152·354) on 2011/07/26 (Patch 4.1.0) Here's a little list with items which you can use to teleport you through Azeroth and Outland so you don't need to find a mage to transport you. Feel free to let me know if I missed an item!

Comment by darkelemental1

"reasoning". Just blizzard being completely brain dead. Its astonishing to see the ways they seem to go out of their way to remove things then have the gall to tell us its better.

/spit on every single one of them. Team Ion is by far the worst group to ever manage this game.

Comment by LissaNDaniel

on 2019-03-10T03:17:19-05:00

The Horde is closer to Karazhan than the Alliance. They have a portal from mages to Stonard in Swamp of Sorrows. The next zone over. The Alliance have to fly from Stormwind to either Darkshire or a flight path in Swamp of Sorrows then get to Karazhan.

Comment by Neutrobyte

on 2019-03-10T03:23:22-05:00

Welp, hopefully I'm not the only one who thinks the hellfire peninsula portal solution is a stupid one... Why? Because for any character lvl 90 and above the Dark Portal in The Blasted Lands takes you to Draenor, NOT to Outland, so what is the point? It would just be simpler to add portals to the new portal rooms for each of the content cities/area i.e. Shattrath, Northrend-Dalaran, Vale Of Eternal Blossoms, Stormshield, Legion Dalaran, Kul Tiras/Dazar'alor. Each portal could appear ONLY after a character has reached the required lvl (they've already been doing that with the Hellfire, Blasted Lands, Dalaran and Kul Tiras/Dazar'alor portals), I just think it's REALLY stupid to implement a dedicated room for portals, and yet suddenly decide to REMOVE popular portals, whilst leaving others where they were! Why even bother with the Portal Rooms at all then?

Comment by timo4545

on 2019-03-10T03:26:58-05:00

Who needs any of these things anyway? The blue told me that there's nothing to do in caverns of time!

Comment by w3maniak

on 2019-03-10T03:57:02-05:00

About Uldum: why not mention the Silithus portal for L120 chars in Boralus/Zuldazar?About Dalaran crater: likewise, the temporal Arathi portal during appropriate warfront phase should get a mention as well

Comment by w3maniak

on 2019-03-10T03:58:24-05:00

To me, it's even worse that they changed the Legion Dalaran portal to go to Azsuna instead. That one is just downright stupid.

At least it avoids the load times of Dalaran 2.0, this might actually help players without a SSD.

Comment by sakera

on 2019-03-10T03:59:48-05:00

There are two portals to Hellfire Peninsula that i have not been able to confirm if they are being removed. One is in the Troll area of Orgrimmar, up in a tower, and the other is in Sunfury Spire in Silvermoon, in a side room near Lor’themar. I use the one in Sunfury often. Anybody know is those are being removed?

They have both been removed on the PTR.

Comment by sakera

on 2019-03-10T04:06:48-05:00

About Uldum: why not mention the Silithus portal for L120 chars in Boralus/Zuldazar?

I have done test flights to test the difference on my Horde main (with max flying speed).

From the moment she clicked the Silithus portal in the Great Seal to the moment she arrived at the CoT entrance took 4 minutes 17 seconds.

The second test was clicking the ORG portal in the Great Seal, then flying over to Uldum portal, then flying to CoT entrance. That took 3 minutes 19 seconds.

Comment by nanonicus

on 2019-03-10T04:16:35-05:00

I have to say this is by far top 5 one of the worst design changes implemented in World of Warcraft. I am fully convinced that Activision bean counters are in full control.

Mm, those portals cost loads of $ to keep running.

Playtime metrics. If they remove a portal that shaves 12 minutes off of journey time that means you have to spend more time traveling. Now say multiply that out by 100,000 players per week that is 1,200,000 minutes or 20,000 hours which translates into 833.33 Days which is a little over 2.28 years of playtime.

Stuff like this adds up. Take the world quest Make Loh Go for example. There is a delay built into the game after each move. It is ever so slight, but it is there. Say for the average player this costs 10 seconds longer than it should. Warcraft currently has 5 million estimated subscribers. Now let us say half of those do Make Loh Go once a week. That is 2.5 million players multiplies by 10 seconds which is 25,000,000 seconds or 289.35 days each week if 2.5 million Make Loh Go quests are done as described.

The numbers get pretty crazy fast when small or slight delays are added when looking at it from the design viewpoint of increasing playtime metrics.

Comment by nmb3000

on 2019-03-10T04:27:11-05:00

Something I rarely see mentioned is that you can use Manapoof in the battle pet shops in Legion Dalaran, Dazaralor, and Boralus to travel around:

Also, what WoW really needs are Mark / Recall spells. Sure, we can bind hearthstone to an inn, but I would really love to be able to use a consumable scroll (made by scribes? :O) to mark a location in the world, and then use another scroll to teleport myself there from anywhere else. Give them a couple hours cooldown, if really necessary.

Comment by Joshmaul

on 2019-03-10T04:41:41-05:00

To me, it's even worse that they changed the Legion Dalaran portal to go to Azsuna instead. That one is just downright stupid.

I'm still shaking my head at this one, too - why Azsuna? Why not just make it Legion Dalaran? It's not like we don't have the ability to go to the same place in two different locations - isn't that what the whole premise of WoD was? :D

Comment by Peredhil

on 2019-03-10T04:41:46-05:00

You can also talk to Zidormi in Northrend Dalaran to get to Caverns of Time. Unlike Zephyr, she isn't rep gated.

By Blizzard's will of improving quality of life for players, that NPC from Wrath era is also removed in 8.1.5

Comment by ED209

on 2019-03-10T04:42:18-05:00

Kurenai album mount farming

Is that supposed to be talbuk? I think autocorrect has yielded another funny result!

Comment by Tahroo

on 2019-03-10T05:05:46-05:00

The portal to Hellfire Peninsula was only removed from half the cities. Thunder Bluff, Ironforge, Undercity and Darnassus still has theirs. Make no mistake, this patch wasn't finished. As all new Zandalari Balance Druids will find out if they ever attempt to /dance. Though I feel this is more a passive aggressive post in regards to the blue asking "what content are players doing in the Caverns of Time?".

Comment by Fraana

on 2019-03-10T05:15:09-05:00

I think it's worth noting that in Hellfire you might be interested in the Loot dropped by Doom Lord Kazzak and in Stranglethorn the mobs that drop Hyacinth Macaw.

That said, still find it ridiculous that they are removing the Legion Dalaran portals which are neatly placed in a specific room. I hope you can at least still use them when you're doing your quests to get the artifact weapons when you reach level 100.

Glad I main a mage, I have no special items to reach anywhere, but at least I have my own portals. .-.

Comment by bloodmoth13

on 2019-03-10T05:15:46-05:00

It was inevitable, ner'zhul destroyed draenor through reckless portal usage and illidan used the same technique to destroy mardum (correct me if im wrong)

Comment by Beanie

on 2019-03-10T05:25:55-05:00

Why not just add portals to major places once your character has visited, Explored and quested through the zones ? Or is that too close to pathfinder : portalsrep. This change is a major QOL downgrade for people who have already played though and seen all these zones have to offer, Travelling should never be seen as part of the content and only serves to put some people off visiting some places in the world due to either RL time constraints or effort/reward ratio. It hits us mortals with altitis the most !